Deep in the rift valley of the Harar Plateau in eastern Ethiopia, the French clock tower of the Dire Dawa Railway Station is like a weathered dinosaur skeleton, staring lonely at the winding rails under its feet. This "Spine of Africa Railway" was forcibly penetrated by French colonists in 1902. It once connected the salty sea breeze of the Gulf of Aden with the coffee aroma of the inland plateau with 1,189 kilometers of steel veins, but it was completely abandoned in the 1970s and became the longest "open-air railway cemetery" on the African continent. When the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway built by China broke through the East African skyline at a speed of 320 kilometers per hour, this century-old line was swallowed by wind and sand at a speed of 3 kilometers per hour-who killed this steel dragon that once symbolized Africa's modernization?
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At the end of the 19th century, the French were calculating in the meeting room of the Paris Geographical Society: controlling the railway line from Djibouti Port to Addis Ababa would monopolize 80% of Ethiopia's foreign trade. To this end, they spared no expense:
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The cost of technological arrogance: In pursuit of the "straightest path", the railway forcibly crossed the geological fault zone of the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, resulting in the collapse of the Awash River Bridge in 1916 and the 300-meter railway track falling into the abyss.
The cost of blood and tears: The corpses of Sudanese slaves were buried under each sleeper, but the French company exaggerated the construction cost by three times on the grounds of "complex terrain" and extorted a huge loan from the Ethiopian government.
Economic strangulation: The railway freight rate was deliberately set at five times the cost of the camel caravan, forcing plateau farmers to sell coffee beans at a low price and then buy back French industrial products at a high price.
This railway has never really belonged to Ethiopia - it is more like a giant blood pump, continuously transferring the wealth of the plateau to the other side of the Mediterranean.
In the Dire Dawa to Awash section, the rails are like tinfoil crumpled by a giant, twisted and inserted into the dry riverbed. This is nature's mockery of the colonists:
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Geological trap: The Great Rift Valley of East Africa is torn at a rate of 1 cm per year, tearing out a 1.2-meter-wide crack in the railway over a hundred years. A geological survey in 2018 showed that 23% of the roadbed of the old line was suspended on the fault zone.
Sandstorm cemetery: The monsoon on the Harar Plateau transports 120 million tons of red soil every year, burying signal towers, turnouts and even steam locomotives alive. In the Mieso section, the rails have been submerged in quicksand to the height of the wheels, forming a unique "desert railway wonder".
Ecological backlash: The railway cuts the wildebeest migration route, resulting in frequent animal collision accidents in the 1960s. In the worst accident, a passenger train collided with a herd of wildebeests, killing 57 people.
When the colonists withdrew, what they left for Ethiopia was not the "road to civilization", but a steel noose that could be swallowed by the earth at any time.
In 1941, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie held a national restoration celebration at Dire Dawa platform, but the background was the awkward juxtaposition of the French flag and the Ethiopian flag. The fate of the railway has long been entangled with political games:
Troubles after independence: In the 1950s, the government had to invest 15% of its fiscal revenue in railway maintenance every year, but it could only get a 30% punctuality rate. In 1962, a train loaded with munitions derailed in Dire Dawa, and the explosion shattered the glass of the whole city.
Victim of ideology: After the revolution in 1974, the military government deliberately demolished the key sections of the track to melt weapons on the grounds of "anti-colonial symbol". In the Melboule section, 3 kilometers of track were pried away to cast anti-tank cones, which have not been repaired to this day.
The fatal blow of the new railway: The Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway was opened in 2018, with a designed speed 10 times that of the old line, but the ticket price is lower. The freight volume of the old line plummeted by 92%. In the Dire Dawa marshalling yard, 47 steam locomotives were sold as scrap iron, and each was sold for only enough to buy a bag of flour.
When Chinese engineers laid ballastless tracks on the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway, the wooden sleepers of the old line were turning into powder in the mouths of termites - this is a life-and-death duel between two development models.
Ironically, it was not only the colonizers and nature that killed the old railway, but also the "modernization dream" it once carried:
The cruelty of technological leap: The Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway adopts the Chinese standard gauge (1435mm), while the old line uses the meter gauge (1000mm) left by the French colonizers. This 435mm gap makes the two form a "time and space fork" at Dire Dawa.
Memory clearing project: The new railway deliberately bypasses all the old line stations, and the new city of Dire Dawa is separated from the old city by the rails. Local residents self-deprecatingly said: "China's high-speed rail passes like lightning, but we have become the forgotten gravel in the gaps of the rails."
Reuse of ruins: Some sections of the old line have been transformed into oil pipelines, and more areas have become garbage dumps. In the Adigrat section, street children use spring mattresses to build "railway slums" in scrapped carriages.
When the Harmony train on the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway roars past, the remains of the steam locomotives on the old railway are rusting - this is the most tragic "technical epitaph" in the process of Africa's modernization.
The death of the Dire Dawa Railway is a noose woven by colonial plunder, ecological crisis, political game and technological leap. Today, while tourists are shooting "apocalyptic blockbusters" on the ruins of the old line, Chinese engineers are debugging the intelligent dispatching system of the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway 50 kilometers away. The two railways, like intertwined DNA chains on the African continent, record the country's torn past and unresolved future.
